Items I happen to view each day. Science, Technology, Management, Culture, and Writing

    This is my day book for this week. It is a log of things I see on the Internet.

This week: 27 October - 2 November, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Elon Musk launches Grokipedia
• Hurricane Melissa hits Jamaica and Cuba
• Bill Gates changes his story on climate change
• Trump and Xi meet and Xi resumes shipping rare earth materials
• Dodgers win the World Series exhibition

Monday 27 October 2025

Some of the machinery involved in that NBA-mafia gambling case.

Speaking of crime fighting...sort of... Vietnam signs on with 64 other countries to shareinformation regarding cyber crime.

The California State University system (22 campuses) joins up with Amazon and OpenAI in a big "we use AI" program.

Despite all the advances, building robotic hands with fingers and a thumb isn't here yet.

Now here is a use for generative AI: make phony receipts that you submit at work for reimbursement.

Meanwhile in the kitchen, we can now watch advertisements on our Samsung refrigerators.

Live to be 93 by watching football. Well, perhaps it is all the mental activity and community that helps.

Dungeons and Dragons is becoming a favorite with retirees. Mental activity and community.

Recent college graduate and can't get a job? Start your own business. Good luck with that one.

Musing on the memoir. Just write the thing and move on to the next thing.

"HAVE YOU EVER INVENTED A NEW WORD IN YOUR WRITING?" Why yes I did.

I believe that I invented the term "technocentrism."

Why is it when a free speech person is in the White House that those who live by free speech think times are terrible? We are an odd lot.

From Seth Godin, "We're not getting taught, we're choosing to learn. There's a lesson in every interaction, if we want there to be."

Tuesday 28 October 2025

The recent AWS mishap closed a lot of online businesses. There is "no other choice." I guess this is too big to fail or something or putting all your eggs in one basket or something. Ever notice and big a slow a datacenter is? Easy target.

Amazon announces thousands more jobs cuts in the offices.

And now we have Grokipedia. It launches with almost a million articles.

"Electrons are the new oil." Well, this is not news. If you want industry and progress and prosperity, you need energy. America does not have all the electric power it needs to prosper this century. Back to hydroelectric dams and such. Renewable energy that mankind has used for thousands of years. Sorry about some species of tiny fish. In the 1970s we decided such dams were evil. Well, decide between jobs and tiny fish.

Quoting, "the AI boom is literally running on jet fuel. " Folks are using jet engines to generate power for the datacenters.

If your friend or child has mental health issues with these chattering bots, that is a personal tragedy. It is, however, quite rare.

Coming real soon now, Qualcomm announces several AI processing processors in the next couple of years.

Meanwhile in the House of Saud, take oil dollars, build AI datacenters, and export computing power.

Here is an in-depth report on the finances of the AI capital expenditures boom. Not for the faint of heart.

What government shutdown? Our Dept of Energy continues working and has "formed a $1 billion partnership with Advanced Micro Devices to construct two supercomputers that will tackle large scientific problems ranging from nuclear power to cancer treatments to national security"

Further speculation on all this AI datacenter building excitement. In the 1990s, America On-Line laid a lot of high-capacity data fiber optic lines leading into Northern Virginia. It is not an accident that all these datacenters are in Northern Virginia. That wasn't intended, but it is what happened. What will happen in 20 years?

Now AI can generate fake vacation pictures. Look at me on the top of the Great Pyramid or the Eiffel Tower or something.

Politics and the English language. ExxonMobil sues that State of California over new regulations requiring companies to report things using language chosen by the regulators. If you lie the lies we tell, we gotcha!

Expanding my social circle should increase my tolerance of people. Right? The opposite seems true. Consider the relationship of my wife and me. We depend greatly on one another. Hence, we are quite tolerant of one another. My tenth friend? I can live without them. Hence, I don't practice much tolerance towards them.

Wednesday 29 October 2025

Hurricane Melissa smashes Jamaica and Cuba. There will be calls for Billion$ of US aid. Those places have governments---largely corrupt. Can the US buy stock in those countries? Land and government for money? Just a crazy thought.

One company's path to succes: Prescient Edge doesn't build drones or design ships. What it does is find the right technology and figure out how to make it work inside the government's complex systems.

Quoting, "China, the U.S., and Russia dominate space launches. Can alternatives emerge?" And why do we need alternatives?

Just what government needs (not)---more buzzwords without meaning.

OpenAI reorganizes (again) and changes its partnership with Microsoft (again).

Nvidia had a GTC event in Washington D.C. Here is one summary of the keynote. And the stock value rose 5% in one day and the company is almost worth $5Trillion (with a Tr).

Palantir announces a partnership with Nvidia.

I'll quote this headline, "Eli Lilly partners with Nvidia to build what the companies say will be the most powerful supercomputer run by a pharma company, powered by 1,000+ Blackwell GPUs"

The University of Southern California, a private college, sues Google for stealing technology it developed.

YouTube brings in more age restrictions and verification.

Meanwhile off the coast of China, they put a datacenter underwater and power it with windmills. Well, not a bad idea if it works. So far, it is just a stunt.

More super-duper-computers from Nvidia and HPE.

Datacenters are big business. Big business can be tough and dirty. The non-disclosure agreement is the tool being used nationwide in rural areas to bring datacenters. If someone wants silence, there is something amiss. And if someone goes to a person who has never had money, but always had his granddaddy's land, million$ change things. It is easy for me to say that you shouldn't deal with NDAs, but I am not the land-rich money-poor person.

This piece frames Amazon's layoffs as AI taking white-collar jobs.

Real news that isn't news: in China, they are sort of cheating a bit on testing animals and such for disease and cure. Let's see...COVID...COVID...COVID...ah yes, the Wuhan Virus. I remember that one.

Meanwhile at Harvard, 60% of students receive an A in every class. Just twenty years ago, that was 25% when there was an actual curve. Why not just drop grades? Everything is pass-fail with 98.6% being passed? And Harvard is not alone in this grade inflation.

How our government's reaction to COVID killed the restaurant business. Quoting, " Nearly three out of every four restaurant orders are no longer eaten in a restaurant" And we assumed the experts knew what they were doing? Please.

Thursday 30 October 2025

Meanwhile on GitHub, TypeScript passes Python and JavaScript to be the most-used programming language.

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has 150million daily active users.

Rolling in the money, Microsoft reports a finanial quarter in which Azure and other cloud services revenue up 40%.

And over at Alphabet, the Google Cloud is doing well financially, too.

Meta also reports a good financial quarter.

YouTube is upscaling videos using AI. I suppose plain-old bilinear interpolation wasn't good enough.

Real news that isn't news: guess what? Our government helped our companies spy on the folks in China. We helped the Communist Party keep the subjects in line --- at a handsome profit.

I love the headline here: as executives HOPE AI can handle the workload. HOPE is not a plan.

IBM releases some AI models as open source. These are much smaller language models (did I just invent MSLM?) That can run localling and even in a browser.

A story to note this week is that Bill Gates completely changed his stance on climate change and what we rich folks ought to be doing with our extra money.

It seems many Americans are tired of property taxes. You own your home. You pay the government rent on the home you own. It is unfortunate that state and local governments depend on property tax money.

Meanwhile in China, censorship continues to flourish. You cannot discuss a "serious" topic without an approved college degree.

The money is flowing. Alphabet reports $100Billion income (not profit) in a financial quarter.

Gloo: technology for Christianity.

Friday 31 October 2025

Yet another mega-deal. This one with Samsung and Nvidia and the idea of having a datatcenter in a chip manufacturing plant or something.

Gloo is back in the news seeking funding for an IPO.

This is a little late, but probably true. The Amazon layoffs are not due to AI, just fixing problems that have accumulated over the years.

Amazon reports a good financial quarter with AWS revenue up 20%. Many tech financial reports are out this week with most being good.

I have to sit and ponder this kind of number: Apple makes $2Billion a week profit. I have to dwell on that.

OpenAI adds more capability to its AI, video-generating Sora thing.

Our current President meets with China's ruler. Rare earth material exports stoppage stops. That means they will resume shipments. All it took was a little talking.

Google, Meta, and Microsoft collectively spent nearly $80B on AI infrastructure in the last three months. That's a big number.

How good are AI agents at doing freelance task work? None too good. They can do less than 3% of the tasks given. The current language models are good at some things and save hours of work. Other things, nope.

Conspiracy theories in the age of society media. Well, they feed on one another. Let's see, I think water still boils a 212 degrees F and the acceleration due to gravity is still about 32.2 feet per second squared. The rest? Not too sure.

Furloughed Federal employees are finding it tough to pay the bills. . Each day I am confronted with lazy and incompetent work products from Federal employees. I am sorry to write both sentences.

Saturday 1 November 2025

What are the professionals using? Smaller, less-expensive, and more-efficient tools.

The spinning "hard" disk drives were supposed to go the way of the dinosaur. I guess the experts were wrong once again.

Big tech companies are using special ways to finance datacenters so that things look good. It is all about the taxes.

Bluesky claims to have 40million users. That is a large number. The definition of success has changed.

Where the money is going: AI. Big tech plans to spend $400Billion next year. If they keep this up, they will surpass America's government spending.

Meanwhile at the University of Pennsylvania, hackers take over the system and do all sorts of stuff. Do not fear the North Koreans et al. Fear the hactivists sitting in their relative's basement eating pizza with nothing to do but seek revenge. How to avoid that? Treat everyone respectfully is a good start.

And speaking of disrespect, there is enough of it from all "sides" in this story to fill the Grand Canyon or some such cliche.

Believe me, I've never heard of this one. In the UK, Norland College trains the Norland Nannies. They take care of the kids of the elite rich folk worldwide. Starting salary is $75,000 plus your housing, food, etc. are piled on top of the salary. In ten years, the salary is $170,000.

I'll just quote, "SpaceX is reportedly poised to secure a $2 billion Pentagon contract to develop hundreds of missile-tracking satellites for President Trump's ambitious Golden Dome defense system. "

Hey, let's all go buy solar panels and cover the earth with them. In ten or twenty years we ... uh ... well. Never mind.

Who are the big consumers of electricity? Not datacenters buy suppliers of industrial gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and helium.

Sunday 2 November 2025

The Los Angeles Dodgers win the exhibition with the Toronto team and claim the title of World Series champion.

Now this is what I call smart search in a browser, avoid sites of companies that are suing you.

All these new datacenters ARE THE ECONOMY. Many pieces and parts are shipping across the Pacific to fill the buildings. The money being spent is unprecedented.

MediaTek is the AI datacenter company that is making the money and no one has ever heard of them.

Anduril, THE AI defense company, is now testing its jet-powered drones. They are behind the Russians, but accelerating and will easily become the world's top provider.

Got $96million and the money to operate the thing? Get a private jet for long flights. It is the ultimate treehouse.

It appears that our current President has lit a fire at NASA where they are now pushing for solutions to reach the moon quickly (before China).

Now we have an Access-Trust Gap whereby employees are using old tools in a new age and this is not secure or something bad.

This is a similar story and the author calls it Shadow AI. People are putting their company's information up in the cloud unknowingly when they use the chattering bots to help them in their jobs. Locally running LLMs are the answer. Those require $10,000 computers. That is a bargain, but those who control the money at companies don't see it that way.

We went through this in the old days when AutoCAD could save hundreds of thousand$ if you bought a $1,000 add-on board for the PC. Those who controlled the money just couldn't see the math. Some companies did and they clobbered those who couldn't. It is the same today with AI and such.

AI research return to the paradigm of the swarm.

More angst about switching our clocks forwards and backwards twice a year. Note, "Sleep doctors would prefer we switch to standard time permanently." No duh, the sun rises, the sun sets. Deal with it.

This is just stupid abuse of law enforcement. Come folks, let's execute the laws of the land under the guidance of the Bill of Rights. We don't need this type of thing. It is bad for all of us.

Continuing with more stories of STUPID...folks are going into massage parlors and making videos of their adventures.